


Make Your Own Wind

by entirely_too_tall



Series: Chowderweek 2017 [6]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 2nd person POV because I'm an "artiste", but that's what you get when trying to mix metaphors across different languages, chowderweek, didn't turn out as i wanted, ship metaphors, very unclear ones too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-18 02:03:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12378597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entirely_too_tall/pseuds/entirely_too_tall
Summary: Chowder's internal monologue during his years before through after Samwell using ship metaphors.





	Make Your Own Wind

**Author's Note:**

> Written for ChowderWeek 2017 Day 6: Ships
> 
> Inspired by 3 specific Chinese proverbs:  
> 船到桥头自然直: A ship will naturally straighten out when approaching a dock. Meaning things will work out in the end.  
> 万事俱备，只欠东风: Everything is all set, except there is no wind. Meaning you have everything prepared, awaiting the crucial starting signal or final element.  
> 破釜沉舟: Break your cooking pots and sink your ships. A general commanded his army to do this after crossing a river into enemy territory, so ensure there is no turning back and they would have to fight with everything they had to survive. This idiom is used to mean someone has committed fully and there is no turning back.
> 
> Check Please and its characters belong to Ngozi, I am only expanding upon it for our collective non-commercial pleasure.

It's not like you to get lost. You’ve always found your way, despite _feeling_ lost, you’ve always managed to look to the moon, the stars, and point yourself home.

 

Maybe it’s because this time, you’re lost about where home is.

 

You’ve always taken to heart that your ship will return, battered but not broken. It will float right up to home port and straighten itself out, lining up to caress the docks, letting you land onto solid ground, stable beneath your feet. Whenever you’re lost, your ship will never forget how to it always wants to be found, wants to be guided back home.

 

It still remembers. But now you notice, after being away from home for not long enough, that the docks are smaller than how you imagined. It’s still the same size. That post still touches the 3rd porthole while the other post touches the 1st. The ship remembers its dock, but you feel like it’s too small, like they’re just toys in a bathtub bobbing, plastic, full of meaning but also that the meaning was not important.

 

But it _is_ important. This ship has guided you home! Time and again you have trusted it to pull you back, and it has. It has. It has pulled you back and this time it doesn’t feel like home, not fully, not anymore.

 

There is a ship called Chris, that sailed to the new port of Samwell. You spent 4 years there, building, waiting. It felt like how home used to feel. You ship lines up well to the docks there too, even when you know all these ships are just here for upgrades, like yours. This is no place to stay forever. So you build, and wait.

 

Home is _that_ way. Home is not here. 

 

You’ve built and built and time’s up. You don’t feel prepared enough. There’s everything needed, but where’s the wind? Where is the wind to set your sails out to new seas? Where is the breeze that always came up to push you on a tailwind? Where is the tugging on your hair to point you to the new direction you were meant to head down?

 

The clock is ticking. Which way are you headed? The clock is ticking closer. Which way? Hurry. The clock is ticking and will strike soon. Thunder and lightning will strike soon. The ports are being cleared, you need to leave. Which way? 360 degrees and you only need to choose one. Hurry. Hurry. Find your own trail to burn or one will be burnt for you, and then you won’t be able to say “I chose these scars”.

 

Too late. The port recedes by itself, and you are thrust out to sea. No Helens to set forth towards, no Ithaca to return to, no winds to set you adrift, and still you are adrift. The seaweed ensnares you, the barnacles grasp on, and you feel yourself slowly gaining weight, slowly sinking. Did you forget how to point home? Home is that way. Or is it that way? Where are the stars, the moon? There are no clouds but you can’t see the sky, only the sails standing silently waiting to rise or die.

 

That’s it then. Break them down. You tear off the sails and pull down the masts, carve them into oars to row your way, any way, to find a new home. You can make your own wind, you just have to walk fast enough, row fast enough. 

 

The sky shows itself in the clear black night. The eye of the moon blinks its slow blink, watching. This time, you can see where you want to head, even if you don’t know what’s there. You know that no matter what, wherever you land, your ship always remembers how to line up to the docks, glide in slow, wind in the sails or no, you can make your own. Home is that way, because you decide it to be.

**Author's Note:**

> If it isn't clear, Chowder moves to Samwell and feels a bit lost, then graduates and feels very adrift, until he decides to carve his own path.
> 
> Thank you for reading. Come yell at me on [tumblr](http://ohjustletmewriteinpeace.tumblr.com).


End file.
